Difficulties and challenges for admission to the position of schools inspector in Spain and early career development

Abstract

This article presents research that analyzed the most significant needs, difficulties and problems for admission into Spain’s school inspectorates, the expectations of new inspectors and the challenges they face in their assessment of different school settings in the Spanish educational system. Firstly, the research addressed the central questions of school inspection and supervision in the European Union, then a methodology was applied based on virtual ethnography and the reticular-categorical approach to network analysis, with matrix representations and social graphs devised using UCINET and yED Graph Editor visor. This methodological approach was used to analyze the opinions of 140 students between 2017 and 2019 enrolled on the only Masters course in Spain dedicated to schools inspection and supervision, delivered by UNED (Spain’s National Distance Education University). Their open responses to a questionnaire, and course forum interaction, were analyzed from the Social Network Analysis perspective. The results show that the main difficulties, challenges and needs coalesced around four central nodes: the politicization of tribunals and the entrance exam format, the lack of training courses for potential inspectors, the absence of a national study pathway for potential inspectors as an entry requirement, and the need for training in supervision techniques to perform their functions as inspectors.